Why in an Access 2000/2003 form I'm getting a Field Too Small error on a combo box/

[JimCarlson]

I have a form where the user selects the type of time off they wish to request. It is defined as follows:
Control Source: Time Off Type (data type is Text and field size =1)
Row Source Type: Value List
Row Source: "V";"Vacation"; "P";"Personal"; "S";"Sick";"B"; "Bereavemen t"
Column Heads: No
Column Count: 2
Bound Column: 1
The user selects the value from the drop list or types it in manually and when they try to tab to the next field they get the Field Too Small error message and locks up the form. There is no event assigned to this field. I can resolve the error, at least temporarily for that specific user, by doing a Compact and Repair Database. This application initially was running fine but now this error is appearing with most users. I'm leaning toward removing the drop down table and simply instructing them to enter the V, P, S, or B unless there is a simple fix.

[MMcCarthy]

Just out of curiousity change the field size to 20 and see firstly if the error message stops and secondly what is stored in the field. It's a strange one though.

[nico5038]

Can't reconstruct this error, but I do have an idea what went wrong.

Please remove the combo box, save the form and open it again in design mode.
Next place the field and change it into the combo as you described above and test again.

Another option is to set the valuelist in the properties of the field in the original table, Access will create a combobox in such a case automatically, something you can try when the above suggestion doesn't work

Nic;o)

[Stewart Ross]

Just to add, don't get your users entering single-character codes such as V, S etc as some kind of fix - that really is not what users should be expected to interpret at all. You would be far better off placing your absence codes and their meanings in a small table which in turn can feed your combo instead of using a value list. I don't recommend using value lists at all in most cases, as how do you interpret the V or S or whatever when you go to report on it? You need to convert it back into Vacation, Sick etc, which if you used a reference table you could do automatically by joining the tables so that you always had the correct codes expanded to their correct meaning.

Can't say I've ever had the 'field too small' problem you are describing, however, and my concern would be that your database has been damaged and is suffering from corruption of the form concerned, given that it had been working OK for a time as you mentioned.

-Stewart

[JimCarlson]

I normally don't use a value list but since this was such a small amount of static data I decided to. This error message is sporadic and I can't reproduce the error message on demand, thus I can't test the other suggestions. I am going to take your suggestion and place the data in a table and use the combo box to access it. This will also remove the need to define the value of V, S, P, and B in each query that uses it.